Dylan van Baarle (Jumbo Visma) won Omloop Het Nieuwsblad on Saturday with an instinctive move off the front with 40km to go before riding the breakaway men off his wheel one by one. A high quality chase group went after him but was caught by the remains of the peloton. Up ahead, Van Baarle relentlessly ate up the road on the way to the finish, where he won his first race for his new team.
The one-time king of the classics, Sean Kelly, told stickybottle he cannot understand why Ineos Grenadiers allowed Van Baarle to leave over the winter. He was especially dumbfounded as Ineos Grenadiers now had so many young British classics riders in its squad, all of whom could have learned so much from Paris-Roubaix champion Van Baarle.
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But for Kelly, the first race of 'Opening Weekend' in Belgium was most notable for another reason; the birth of Arnaud De Lie as a likely legend of the classics. Aged just 20 years, and in his second year as a World Tour rider, Kelly said he had seen enough from De Lie on Saturday to suggest we were looking at someone who would become the Tom Boonen or Johan Museeuw of his generation.
Kelly added even though De Lie's class was clear last year, when he won nine races as a neo-pro, his performance in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad was different. It marked him out as a rider who could, not only beat the pure sprinters, but could also go on the attack and win the hardest one-day classics over climbs and cobbles. Kelly believed the sprint game was changing and the days of the pure sprinter were numbered.
But in De Lie, he sees the complete package for the years ahead - as evidenced by the fact he crashed on Saturday, got back on, went in the chasing group after Van Baarle and yet still had the legs to win the bunch sprint for 2nd place when that group of chasers was caught deep into the finale.
"The way he rode today, you really have to take your hat off to him. And then he was still capable of winning the sprint in the end," said Kelly. "You'd have to say now he is a guy can win, say, Milan-Sanremo or any of those classics. He crashed today and a lot of other riders would just sit in the bunch and do nothing for the rest of the race - 'oh, I've crashed, you know'. But De Lie was prepared to go up the road after Van Baarle with that group; and they were animals the way they were riding.
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"So, yes, he's one class bike rider. And to get over that kind of terrain today... for a sprinter to do that? That is class; an al-rounder who can get through the lumpy stuff. So for him, races like Milan-Sanremo, Gent Wevelgem will be no problem at all. He'll get over the Kemmelberg and all of those ones. And I think the sprinters that are coming up now, they are going to have to change so they can get over that kind of lumpy terrain because they just aren't being given that menu of flat races, flat stages, any more. All the race organisers are looking for hills at the end of stages; the sprinters won't be able to just do the bunch sprints at the end of flat stages any more."
Kelly said while De Lie can beat the best sprinters in bunch finishes and now has shown he can climb, handle the cobbles and sprint even after being on the attack, he still had to be fully tested in the classics. He said some riders are not as good in the finales of races over 200km and he looked forward to seeing how De Lie could cope with that. But he said it was only a small number of cyclists who could not function when races like the Monuments and the Worlds were an hour longer than other events. He was very confident De Lie would be up to the task.
"Looking at him now, he looks like he'll win the big sprints against the top sprinters in the Tour de France on the big stages. But he also looks like he can win, like Tom Boonen, the classics as well, those ones up to 260km. I suspect he will be able to adapt to those big distances."
Kelly said Van Baarle put in an incredible performance to win on Saturday, especially having just transferred from Ineos Grenadiers - after winning Paris-Roubaix last year - to Jumbo Visma. And while Kelly said Ineos Grenadiers had a very talented group of young British riders now on its books, the team still looked weighted towards stage races rather than classics. Because of that, he was baffled they let Van Baarle leave.
"Losing Van Baarle.... how can they let him go? I mean, he's just coming to his peak and able to win races," he said of the Dutchman really having made the transition from super-domestique to race winner last year. "He is a motorbike, that guy. To let him go; OK, budgets, money... If you don't have the budget, there's not much you can do. But we know Ineos, they're supposed to have budgets and budgets. It was crazy to let him go, and also to let (Richarda) Carapaz go.
"Van Baarle, the way he rode today... Man, that was some ride. And he's a winner now so he would have won races for Ineos. And he'd also be very valuable for their young British riders coming up. And that's what you need - a guy like that who is in the race with them and guide them through those split second moments when you have to go with the group that gets away. Letting him go from the team was crazy."
